Editing Chinatown (1974 film) (section)

==Analysis and interpretation==
In a 1975 issue of ''[[Film Quarterly]]'', scholar Wayne D. McGinnis drew parallels between ''Chinatown'' and [[Sophocles]]' ''[[Oedipus Rex]]''. He argued that both works share a "wasteland [[Motif (narrative)|motif]]," wherein a central figure—Noah Cross in ''Chinatown'' and Oedipus in ''Oedipus Rex''—exploits a plague or crisis to gain power, ultimately becoming the source of deeper societal corruption. According to McGinnis, both narratives reflect the moral decay of their respective eras: ancient [[Athens]] during a time of post-heroic intellectual upheaval, and the United States during the [[Watergate scandal|Watergate era]].

McGinnis further suggested that director Roman Polanski symbolically divides the character of Oedipus into two figures in ''Chinatown''. Jake Gittes, the film's protagonist, embodies the morally conscious "good" Oedipus, a seeker of truth who gradually uncovers a network of corruption. He contended that Gittes' pursuit of rational investigation blinds him to emotional and moral complexities, invoking literary theorists [[Cleanth Brooks]] and [[Robert B. Heilman]] to describe Gittes as "the Oedipus whose success [...] has tended to blind [him] to possibilities which pure reason fails to see."

McGinnis concluded that both works elicit pity for their protagonists, noting that "there is finally pity for the doomed, ignorant Gittes, just as there is pity for the blind Oedipus in Sophocles," but that Gittes' understanding, like that of Oedipus, arrives too late to change the outcome.<ref name=":0" />